by R. J. Ross
“And I’ll win?” I say. “She’s actually going to throw the fight.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement of disbelief.
“She’s a villain, sweetie, that’s what she does.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” I sigh and look around, seeing a stranger heading for us with his hands in his pockets. “Who is that?” I ask.
“Sandra!” he says, grinning just a hair too widely. “I knew you’d be here.”
“Ace,” I say, recognizing the voice.
“I’ve come to show the support of the gang,” he says, draping an arm over my shoulders. I elbow him and he grunts. “I might have deserved that,” he admits.
“Sandra,” Jeanie scolds, “you should at least give him a warning, first.”
“She’s heading our way,” Nico says, moving discreetly away and holding his phone up to his ear as a cover. I look around, seeing Superior talking seriously with one of the workers about a necklace. I wonder if he heard Nico for a second before I see him casually turn and glance at the door. The door slams open and Diamond Dust appears, in all her rocky glory.
“Hello, darlings, have you missed me?” she asks, striding in confidently.
“You—Diamond Dust! How dare you come here?” Bronson says, clearly straining his acting genes.
“I’ve come to do what someone failed to do the other day,” she says. “And I wasn’t talking to you, stuffy man, I’m talking to the diamonds. Everyone put your hands in the air, please. I want to make this as painless as possible.”
I feel a hand on my shoulder and I look up, seeing a little smile on Jeanie’s face. I guess dropping the illusion in front of others is… okay? I shrug and tap on my watch, letting the illusion fall.
“I knew you would come back to the scene of the crime,” I say. Oh lord, the cheese. I can’t believe those words actually came from my mouth.
Diamond Dust jerks, her eyes widening a bit at the sight of me. “You,” she says.
“You tried to frame me!” I say, bringing up my fists. “Well I’m not going to let you get away with it!”
“What a little hero you are, rock girl,” she mocks.
“My name is Gargoyle Girl,” I say, only to glare at her as she bursts out in honest laughter.
“Gargoyle Girl?” she repeats, “that’s REALLY the best you could come up with?”
I can’t come up with a reply without feeling stupid, so I punch her, instead. This is supposed to be a fight, right? We might as well get it over with. She jumps back from the hit, and crashes through the windows of the front of the store. I take a second to just look at her, (because seriously, drama much?) before I follow her through the window, grabbing her by her uniform and hauling her up. “Where are the gems, Diamond Dust?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, giving me a smile that grates on my nerves. “You’re so adorable when you’re angry, has anyone told you that?”
I twist, throwing her as hard as I can. I don’t want to hear that sort of line from her. She hits the ground right near the edge of the crowd, and I see someone pick her up by the armpits and place her on her feet. The look of shock on her face clues me in that she hadn’t expected that. I look at the man that had lifted her, but he disappears in the crowd before I get a good glimpse of her face, and she races forward, tackling me.
I feel my back skid against concrete until it hits the curb, goes through it, and hits one of those grassy islands that fancy parking lots have. Almost instinctively, I dive in to get free of her hold. Before I can get far, though, I feel a hand wrap around my ankle, hauling me back out of the ground.
“Going to attack me from underground?” she asks. There’s something off about her, I realize, she keeps sneaking glances at the crowd with a worried expression. I take advantage of it, punching her as hard as I can in the gut. She lets out a gasp, clearly not expecting that. I jump her, pinning her to the ground.
“What did you do with the jewels?” I demand.
“What jewels? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says.
“You’re lying. You stole all of those jewels last night and framed me with fakes! What did you do with the jewels, Diamond Dust?” I demand, loudly. We’re being filmed. I can hear the drones hovering over our heads. She starts sinking into the concrete and I grab and haul back, feeling like I’m trying to catch a fish. “I won’t let you go,” I grit out, “tell me where the jewels are!”
“Fine—”
Someone screams from the audience, and I look over. The sky looks funny. In fact, I think as the world seems to twist around me, the entire world looks funny. I know what it is, I realize, letting go of my birth mother and getting to my feet. “Su—” I start out, only to stop myself. Superior is dead. He’s also capable of controlling things on an atomic basis, so how did he get this sick in the first place?
“Don’t!” Diamond Dust says, wrapping her arms around me to keep me from going further. She sounds panicked. “That’s the sign of a very powerful cape! They must have—I don’t know, actually, this isn’t really—It could be him--”
“I KNOW who it is,” I say, jerking in her hold.
“You’re not strong enough to deal with something like that, yet!” she says. I can’t get free of her hold. “I’m changing the plan. I’m taking you with me and a real cape can come in and save you—”
“I can save myself,” I growl, struggling as hard as I can against her hold. “And I don’t need saving from one of my ONLY FRIENDS!”
“Let her go,” Superior says, making me look up. The world is going crazy, and the only reason I know what’s down is because I can feel the ground below me. He’s the reason the norms are falling to the ground, dry heaving, but I get the feeling he’s intent on saving me.
“Ace,” I hear Nico say over the earbud, “can you cover this up?”
“I’m trying, but he’s more powerful than I am.”
“Understood. Aubrey, did you get my text?”
“Text? Nico, I’ve been volunteering at the nearest hospital all day—I haven’t had the chance to check my phone,” Aubrey says. “What’s going on?”
“We need you here,” Nico says.
“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Zoe, I need you to take the teleportation watch to Aubrey, now,” Nico says. “Your grandfather’s going out of control.”
“Su—um—CLIFFORD!” I shout, reaching for him. “Let go of me, NOW,” I growl at Diamond Dust. “There’s something wrong with him!”
“Which is exactly why I can’t let you near him!” she says, hauling me back. She starts sinking into the ground as I fight.
“You need to let me go, Diamond Dust, because he might have something wrong with him, but he knows exactly who I am!”
“How does he know you?”
“We play the Technico game together!” I jerk, even though we’re already up to our waists in the dirt and going faster. “Why are you suddenly so intent on saving me, anyway? You’re the one that abandoned me!”
I feel her go still, but before she can say anything, or come up with an excuse, I’m jerked into the air by strong hands. The moment he touches me everything warps, and my stomach lurches. “Sandra—” I hear him say from a distance. Now that I’m not touching the ground, there’s nothing to… well, ground me, I guess.
“Superior,” I say, closing my eyes tight to try and get my bearings. It doesn’t help. “You have to stop. Something’s wrong with you!”
“She was about to kidnap you,” he says, but I can hear a hint of confusion in his voice. “What—something—” he says, and I dare to open my eyes and look at him. “I couldn’t find anything, I tried—” His hold on me tightens and I hear someone else yell from the distance, but I can’t focus on that. My arm is starting to crack.
“You’re hurting me!” I bellow, forgetting that the world is twisted, forgetting that something is wrong with him—he would never act like this if he was feeling normal. I just f
eel this strange rush of power running through me and directly into Superior.
The world snaps back into place, the colors turning to their rightful shades, the ground firmly below us, rather than hovering somewhere to the side. I see Superior’s face lose all color, and then we start to plummet to the ground. I land on top of him, but he doesn’t even grunt at the weight. He’s unconscious.
“Ace,” I hear Nico say.
“I’m on it,” I hear Ace say. Suddenly it’s not Superior underneath me, it’s Diamond Dust. I look behind me, but he must have done something to her, as well. The norms are starting to recover from the vertigo problem, and they slowly try to get to their feet, some having more luck than others. The illusion Diamond Dust sinks into the ground, leaving me all alone, save for a gem lying on the ground.
I grab the gem. I’m pretty sure it’s an illusion, as well, but hey, a cheesy out is exactly what we need right now. “This must be a clue,” I say, lamely. I feel a rush of air and I hear Nico say, “Got him,” over my earbud.
“This isn’t the end of it, Diamond Dust!” I announce. “I’m going to get ALL of the jewels back!”
“And we’re done. Sandra drop and run, we’ll meet you back at the Hall. Aubrey—”
“I’m on my way,” I hear her say.
“What about Diamond Dust?” I ask as I dive into the ground.
“She can find her own way home.”
“Nico—something just happened—” I say as I dig through the ground. The tunnel behind me closes up, just like it does in the game. I don’t even know if my earbud will work down here. I mean, I’m surrounded by tons of dirt and rocks.
“I saw,” he says. “We can discuss it when we get back to the Hall.”
“I think I’m far enough away to surface, now,” I say, heading upwards. It’s weird, I know exactly which direction to go. It’s probably a part of my powers, but I’m almost positive that knocking out Superior with a touch ISN’T. It definitely wasn’t in my skill list on the game. “How—how’s Superior?” I ask as I break through the surface and crawl out of my tunnel. It closes behind me, a patch of dirt instead of the grass that surrounds it. Well, crud, I think. That could be a problem.
“Aubrey’s working on him now. Turn your illusion watch on and head for the Hall. You can go through the back.”
“Got it,” I say. I look around to get my bearings, and then bring up the map on my com-bracelet. A tiny arrow floats above my wrist and I speed up, hoping people won’t see it. Seriously, I think, if he wants us to blend in with the crowd, he really shouldn’t do stuff like that!
Not that it isn’t really, really cool.
***
Diamond Dust reaches her underground lair quickly, practically running through the entrance, she’s panicking so much. She’d been picked up like she weighed nothing, and he had whispered in her ear, “You should have told me.” The words are ricocheting through her mind, driving her a little crazy. “You should have told me.”
He’d been there. He’d seen their daughter—no, HER daughter. He has no claim to Sandra—well, she doesn’t have a claim to her, either, Diamond Dust thinks irritably. But none of that matters, because now he knows something she’d been keeping from him for over fifteen years. Sure, in their lifetimes, fifteen years isn’t long, but it was long enough to stop from worrying about it! Until he found out, she thinks with a groan. What was he doing watching EHTV, anyway? She forces herself to NOT think about how it’s her fault Sandra had been on TV in the first place. She has too much to feel guilty about, already.
He knows where she lives. That thought comes out of nowhere, hitting her like a train. He’ll be here, any moment, and she’ll—she’ll not be here, she decides, grabbing her uniforms from the wall and shoving them into a bag. She has to get out of here, before—
She hears a knock on the entrance to her lair. “Don’t think you can run from me, Diamond Dust,” he calls through the ground. “Either you open this entrance or I come in another way.”
She can burrow through the wall, leave all of this behind—and what? She looks at the computer screen built into the wall, still covered with pictures of Sandra. He’ll come down here and see the evidence for himself? She groans. It’s better to face him down and lie than run and look guilty.
She heads for the entrance, going up before he can come down. “What do you want, Reaper?” she asks, keeping her tone calm, with only a hint of irritation. He’s still tall and bony, with a lean, whipcord body and short cut black hair. It looks like he hadn’t bothered with his working uniform. He’s wearing a well-tailored silver dress shirt, dark blue tie and matching zoot suit pants, instead. She actually wishes he’d worn his uniform. Right now he looks like an old school mobster. He even has wingtip shoes on, for crying out loud!
“That girl, is she mine?”
“Why would you get a stupid idea like that?” she asks.
“How many lovers did you have back then?”
“You were never my lover,” she says, narrowing her eyes and poking him in the chest. “We were just… a fling.”
“You had a toothbrush at my place,” he says. “You don’t leave toiletries at a fling’s place. But that doesn’t matter, you can call it whatever you want. What I want to know is, is that girl my daughter?”
“No, she’s not.”
“You’re lying.”
“Just because she’s a rock mimic, you assume she’s my kid?”
“She’s the spitting image of your father,” he says. “There’s no question over who the mother is. What I want to know is if she’s MY daughter.”
“It doesn’t matter who her biological parents are,” Diamond Dust says. “She’s about to become a Liberty.”
“A hero?” he says in shock. “You’re letting her become A HERO?”
“I’m not letting her become anything. They’re going to adopt her, and you are NOT going to stop that from happening,” she says, getting up in his face. “Don’t go near that girl, Reaper. She has nothing to do with you.”
“She’s MY daughter!”
“No, she’s not! She’s neither of ours!”
“How did you raise her without me finding out?” he asks. “I would have heard something—”
“I didn’t,” Diamond Dust says, cutting him off.
“You didn’t what?”
“I didn’t raise her. She was born normal! There was nothing I could do—I would have broken her with a touch—”
“You could have called me!”
“You would have KILLED her with a touch!” she yells, the tears finally starting to fall. “You would have killed that beautiful little baby just by touching her, and I couldn’t let that happen! The best chance she had was to be raised by norm parents! So I—so I left her at an orphanage. That’s why we have no say in what happens to her, now. She’s already found a good place, Reaper. She’s going to be a Liberty, and I, for one, will be glad of it.”
“She’s got my powers,” he says, making her jerk.
“She doesn’t. Technico said she doesn’t. He’s done scans on her.”
“She’s got them, he just didn’t recognize it. She knocked Superior out with them. There will NEVER be a grim reaper Liberty, Diamond. You, of all people, should realize it.”
“She… well… there will be one, now,” she says. “Now go away, Reaper. You’re breaking Hall laws just by being here.”
“What’s her name?” he asks. “Tell me that one thing and I’ll leave.”
She looks at him for a long moment before letting out a sigh. It’s obvious that she doesn’t want to tell him. “Her name is—”
“Don’t try to lie. I can tell when people are lying, and even with that skin of yours, I can still hear your heartbeat, Di.”
“Fine! Her name is Sandra. I don’t know what other names she has, if any, so don’t bother asking. Now leave! And don’t go near that girl, Reaper. If you do, I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Di? You’ve already said that it has not
hing to do with you.” He turns and walks away, leaving her to watch him go and stew.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“How is he?” I ask as I go into the room that the black suits pointed to. “Is he going to be okay?” The room is normal, I think. That’s a good sign. Superior is lying on a couch with Aubrey standing over him. Her hair is floating.
“There was a trace of venom that had been absorbed by his skin,” she says. “I don’t know what it is, I’ve never encountered anything like it before. It’s fully organic, and only just a drop, but it was enough to mess up his abilities. What happened, Grandpa Superior? Do you know?”
“I have no freaking clue,” he says irritably, running a hand over his face before sitting up. “You got rid of all of it, right?”
“I have. You should be fully recovered, now,” she says, “but it worries me that you don’t know where it came from. Did anything strange happen to you on the way here?”
“Nothing… no, there was one thing,” he says, looking thoughtful. “I found an almost empty cracker wrapper in the middle of the Arctic Circle. We don’t usually get dry litter like that up there. I mean, I’ve found plastic before, but usually it was soaked, or in the belly of something else. And the cracker was dry—”
“Which shouldn’t stay that way in the middle of snow, right?” Nico says.
“Exactly.”
“Rocco said that it was possible Atlanti was hiding up there,” Nico says. “Did you see her?”
“I didn’t see anyone, but I didn’t look around much. It was when you called me about Sandra.”
Now I feel guilty. If I hadn’t been involved in that stupid thing with Diamond Dust, Superior would have found that Atlanti person, right? “So… this Atlanti person is strong enough to mess up Superior? And you’re just letting her run around free?” I demand, growing angry. “Why hasn’t the Hall caught her yet?”
“Isotonic has a bit of trouble getting into the Arctic Circle,” Nico says blandly.
“Why? He can fly, can’t he?”
“Yes, but a certain group has decided that the Hall isn’t welcome there, any longer,” Aubrey says, looking almost as bland as Nico does. She’s staring at Superior.